PC chip market: x86 rebounds, ARM shrinks

Arm's SoCs accounted for 10.6 percent of PCs in the third quarter of 2023.
　The decline in sales of Apple's Mac computers in recent quarters has had an impact on the overall share of Arm-based processors in PCs, according to Mercury Research, which shows that while shipments of Arm's system-on-chip (SoC) increased in the third quarter, sales of x86 CPUs increased even more, which resulted in a decline in Arm's share from the previous quarter.
　Mercury Research puts Arm's system-on-chip (SoC) share at 10.6% of the PC market in the third quarter of 2023, which compares favorably with 2020 (between 2% and 3%), but is well below its 14.6% share of the PC market. The same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, Intel sold 70 percent of its client CPUs in the third quarter of 2023, while AMD's share of the client PC processor market was 19.4 percent, according to data released earlier this week.
　Most Arm-based PC processors are offered by Apple in Macs. There are also laptop systems based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs, as well as inexpensive Chromebooks running processors from a variety of vendors, including Qualcomm and MediaTek.
　"We believe that the Arm PC CPU market saw sizable growth in the third quarter, with both Apple's Mac and Arm-based Chromebook shipments increasing in the quarter," said Dean McCarron, principal at Mercury Research. "However, Arm's share of the overall market was lower as inventory adjustments were reduced and x86 shipments rebounded."
　It should be noted that Mercury's numbers reflect chips shipped to PC makers and retailers that will later be used in actual systems. When AMD and Intel shipments increase according to Mercury Research, it means that PC makers and retailers are assuming that they will be selling products based on those CPUs (or the CPUs themselves) in the coming weeks, months or quarters.
　For Arm-based SoCs, the situation is different. Apple owns most of the Arm processors for desktops and laptops, and shares little of the number of processors it purchases from TSMC or ships to its manufacturing partners. At the same time, it's fairly easy to estimate the number of PCs and CPUs Apple sells in the market.
　"Our estimate of Arm PC client share (which includes Chromebooks and Apple M-series-based Macs with x86 desktop and mobile CPUs in the total client size estimate) was 10.6 percent in the third quarter, down from a revised estimate of 11.1 percent in the second quarter," McCarron explained said. "We note that Arm's share of the Chromebook market is likely to be much higher than in the previous quarter due to a decline in shipments of Intel's entry-level CPUs - a decline that reversed the surge in X86 products last quarter that led to Arm's share decline in the second quarter. "